I Hate This Part of Texas #7/Keep Loving Keep Fighting #7

admin — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 11:36:00 +0000

Though you may not know from reading it I Hate This Part of Texas #7/Keep Loving Keep Fighting #7 is a split zine. Composed of journal style entries recounting the grief of losing a city, the introduction page of the zine calls itself “more of a splicing of two zines about...the city we still love, New Orleans.” A layered and much needed marriage of accounts, this zine offers the kind of material and insight needed is we as a community are to make ourselves available to the psychic dealing and repair so lost to the Gulf Coast and its fighting residents.

Deeply honest, the zine unflinchingly details the fears and anxieties of upheaval, intermittent alcoholism, things to be grateful for, resentment, and displacement. “I can walk into the house and there's my old life, wracked and wrought and strewn about, moldy and collapsed...an eerie and terrible reminder of what might have been, had we been allowed to continue.”

Dedicated in large part to their friend, Helen Hill, a woman, wife, friend, and mother who, shortly after returning to New Orleans post-evacuation, was shot and killed in her home, this “zine-splice” is a heavy fifty or so pages of mourning, as well as remembrance. An entry from Mardi Gras 2007 acutely describes the wearing of such loss. “Don and I spoke of the fog as souls returning to the city, all the souls who have died here. Perhaps all the souls up and down the serpentine length of this vast river, this artery of dreams and desire and struggle and loss.”

The love and fervor written in the pages of this zine are a small miracle of words that do not die, but lay to rest - breathe. This work embodies the fullness of survival and dedication, an imperative read if the feeling that ought to end up lain in the dirt - isolation, despair, alienation - may seed and flower into hope and continuity.

Written by: Sara Holy, June 12th 2008

The Jealous Girlfriends

admin — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 02:25:00 +0000

By The Jealous Girlfriends

Last Gang Records

When the package arrived in the mail containing The Jealous Girlfriends' new, self-titled album, I had just been laid off. Requesting to review the album solely on what I deemed to be an excellent band name, I've been in the mood for quiet lovelorn angst, I suppose. If both the words “quiet” and “lovelorn” may reside in a territory of artistic license and open-ended transition, that is. And, apparently, this is a conducive bedroom state to be in for entertaining a record such as this one.

Capturing summer's moody ambivalence in lyrics both embittered and smartly upbeat, “How Now,” the second track on the album, manages to skirt the trap of love song with lyrics like "You can bury me with your bullets and your crime/They're one in the same/And I won't blame you for trying." “Organs on the Kitchen Floor,” a slower-paced, bluesy track, maintains the somewhat seedy femme fatale-esque element of love equated with crime and entrapment: "So don't leave your organs on the kitchen floor/And don't forget to close the door" is just the kind of simple lyric capable of tuning in to the cruelty of keeping distance heavy. The heavier ballad, “Gift Horse,” offers more warning with "You said your name's a secret/Although you're dead... or so you claim."

Balancing itself with uptempo pop, chord progressions reminiscent of The Breeders, and slower songs to seek out bluesy vocalist-based ambiance, The Jealous Girlfriends is an excellent mix for representing stand-still as thoughtfully hesitant pop. If The Jealous Girlfriends mean to soundtrack benign, underlying numbness with synth and psuedo-surf riffs, they've succeeded - and given us heartache-prone listeners something to long for.

Written by: Sara Holy, June 11th 2008